[Buddha-l] Query on Non-Local Consciousness

[Franz Metcalf]

Colleagues,

I've been thinking seriously about the dissolution of consciousness at 
the death of the brain. Bad Buddhist that I am, the prospect fails to 
cheer me. So I've taken to wondering what the Buddhist tradition might 
have to say about the notion of non-local consciousness. (Buddhism 
lacking an atta or jiva, non-local consciousness seems the only way 
around the end of consciousness once that consciousness's body dies.) 
The Chan/Zen tradition just doesn't go for it. Certainly the Tibetan 
tradition speaks of "mind" as pervasive, but such notions have always 
seemed fuzzy and faintly unsavory to me.

I'm also curious as to the current status of the idea of continuing 
consciousness after brain death in neuropsychology. (And by that I do 
NOT mean that neuropsychology is now brain dead; I'm just too lazy to 
move my dangling preposition.)

Curiously,

Franz